The MOD Pizza had a job
fair on site last weekend so I am thinking they may be the next thing to open
sometime this fall They added some coming soon signs. The Burton’s had
said they planned to open in early November and I am thinking MOD pizza will be opening before that in October or so.

Now for the rumor mill
section: The space in 1A which is the
retail space in the upper left hand corner of Riverdale Park Station…. I heard
is going to be a “Farm to Table” restaurant.
Although they still have not announced who this is I can see that they
are already building out the inside of this building. I will try to find out which restaurant is
coming here and let the blog know.

I have also heard from
multiple sources that an Apple Store is coming to Riverdale Park Station. Although I own a lot of Apple products I’m
not super excited about this one as I would only go there once every 2
years.

Even so getting an Apple
Store would really add to the ‘cachet’ of Riverdale Park Station so I am
pulling for it to happen. There are only
6 Apple Stores in the entire greater Washington area and only one location in
DC. (Georgetown). In Maryland there is a gap from Bethesda all
the way up to Columbia Maryland… It
would make Riverdale Park Station much busier but also do a lot to put it on
the map.

The lower level flex space
(which I am using as my office) looks much better with hardwood.

Also
the hardwood itself at level 2 was of pretty good quality:

-The
Level 1 carpet with level 2 padding turned out great as well. The extra padding makes it seem like a higher
end carpet even at only level 1.

-Granite
countertops came standard (Level 0) but they had 4 levels of countertop upgrades and
those got VERY expensive VERY quickly.
I think not upgrading the countertop here was a good choice as it was so
expensive and the granite looks good. I know some folks love marble but I like the way this came out.

-

The lighting
in the living room (+4 additional lights) and the 3 pendant lights above the
kitchen island also seemed to be the right decision. We got dimmers on all the lights in the
middle floor after the purchase. We
considered less lights up here but the island is LARGE and needs 3 pendant
lights and the great room also needs at least 4 lights.

We also really like how the bathroom tile
selection turned out.

-The
wetbar upstairs comes with laminate and even though we are finding we are not
using the loft very much we still thought it needed upgrade to granite and that turned
out pretty nice. We left the standard
cabinets up there and went with the darker standard (Level 0) granite. (there are only two level 0 options, the light and the dark)

-We only got ceiling fan hookups installed in
both bedrooms and the loft. This saved
us from having to install any overhead lights in all of these rooms. This
saved us a TON of money as the overhead lighting was expensive and we were able
to get very nice fans after the closing for cheap. There is even a guy working in the community who installs them.

I
still think the cabinet upgrade was too much at $7000 (almost 1/3rd of our entire upgrade spending) but my wife LOVES them
and they look good so I am putting this one in the positive category.

Things we would change:

-Lighting
in the lower level/laundry room

We added two additional lights
in the lower level and the way they were configured was not optimal.

There is already a light
in front of the doorway to the garage, the stairs and the front doorway… But then one of the additional lights we
added is right next to those other three lights that come automatically,
leaving only one light for the entire side of the room.

This is the current cluster of lights down there:

Yet the entire other side of the room has one light...

This flex space in the
Parker is bigger than you think so I should either added more lights or added
the two lights on the far side room so they were not all clustered together.

The laundry room also desperately
needs a light. We installed one of
those motion detecting lights in the closet after the close as without it you
cannot see what you are washing. Add a light here assuming they will allow it.

Backsplash:

The backsplash was $1240 yet
the entire backsplash is only 17 inches high and around 4.5 feet across. There are only 39 total tiles. That is $32 per tile. I could have left this out and done it later
myself for a small fraction of the cost. At the design studio I thought this backsplash was going to be much bigger.

-Ethernet ports:

You get 2 cable hookups
and 2 Ethernet hookups without adding additional cost.

For the cable hookups we
put one in the living room and one in the loft.
Those are fine as that is where the TV’s are… We put one Ethernet cable in the office and
one up in the loft. The thinking was the
office obviously needs one and maybe we will work up in the loft sometimes and
would like a wired connection up there.
Since streaming is so big now I SHOULD have put the second Ethernet next to the
living room TV. These townhouses are so
big no matter where you have your wifi router you are going to have
issues. I bought a wifi extender but
connecting to the extender and then trying to stream HD/4k content is not
working out great. These are cheap and just add one at each TV.

Overall those are the only
things I can think of that I would have done differently.

Since the hardwood is so
important I think if I had to do it again I would have went up another level on
the hardwood to level 3 to get an even thicker wood but the fact that we have
it on the first and second level and both sets of stairs that would have been pretty
costly. I might have cut the granite upgrade
in the loft and the backsplash in the kitchen and gone level 3 or even level 4 on
the hardwood flooring.

That's everything I can think of right now, feel free to ask questions in the comments...

Friday, July 21, 2017

We finally have internet (and mail and trash service) here so the blog is finally back.

Since it's been a while here are some construction updates:

Building #3 is finished from the outside and it looks like they are still working on the interior of this building. Still looks possible that most will close in August.

Building 4 went vertical in early July (I believe it was July 5th) and they already have the frame up... But what's really strange here is they only are building 5 of the 9 units. Four of the units are still just sitting at the foundation.

Here is another shot of the 4 units in building 4 that have not been started for some reason:

Next time I talk to someone from Stanley Martin I will ask about that. This is the first building they have done this with so there must be some reason.

They are also already getting the front row of the next cluster of buildings foundations started. (units 40-46)

Aside from the townhouses the thing they have made the most progress in the 50 days we have been here is the bridge to M square. This seems to have the most folks working on it and it is coming along fast.

Here are some shots of that:

I am hoping when this bridge is done it cuts down my walk to College Park Tennis Club.

The retail construction seems to be moving on the slow side. This is what the Gold's Gym looks like as of today and that appears to be the only building they are working on the exterior of right now.

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Obviously it is a bit disappointing that some of the basic
stuff you would expect like mail, internet and trash still are not there but
these are some other things I have noticed.

First, although the hiker/biker trail is officially closed it
seems everyone is using it. There is a barrier
there but directly to the side of it there is a PVC pipe a few inches off the
ground which is the “barrier”… So many folks have went that way that there is a
trail worn through the grass. I think
they are not officially opening the trail since the construction is going on in
the area but maybe they don’t care if folks use it.

The walk to the metro is about 0.7 miles and since I walk
fast I usually am making it to the metro in around 15 minutes. It’s a great walk through a great neighborhood
and there is tree cover/shade most of the way.

The metro ride to Capitol Hill does take a bit longer than I
expected as the ride from College Park to L'enfant Plaza is around 30 minutes. The train is usually a quarter full at the
College Park stop though so I get a seat and even when it reaches L'enfant it
is still not packed. I was taking the
Red Line in the past few years at the same time of day and a lot of days a train would
show up so full that no one could even get on. College Park IS losing the Yellow line next
week due to metro cuts… so we will have to see what impact only having Green
Line at College Park will have.

I’m very happy with the townhouse overall. There are a few selections I wish I would
have done differently but overall it’s great.
I will detail some things I think I did right and some things I missed with
my selections in a later post so hopefully I can help folks down the road. We are still working very hard to get settled
in and get the right furniture in the right places. Getting even furniture delivered when your address does not exist has been a challenge.

I will post more construction pictures later but most of the building three
exterior is finished now. It is looking
like that one is on track for August closings.
Finally I am seeing they are putting in the foundations down at building
four, if we follow the same timeline that would be late October/November for
building four closings… Late last week I saw they
started prepping some of the land down for some of the later buildings, seems
they may start getting ready for foundations down there at some point soon. I did hear that they just stared selling past
building four...

Speaking of selling, Unit 3 in building one (a Parker) is still
for sale and one Dawson down in building three is also still for sale.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

If you are currently living at Riverdale Park Station all of the mail is going to and staying at the sorting station that is right behind the Whole Foods. I created a ticket with the post office about this back when I moved in but there still has not been any resolution. Although that building is not open to the public if you go in there and ask real nice they will give you your mail.

Only a $25,000 difference between the Parker and the Cassidy
was the reason they had a waiting list for Cassidy’s that exceeded the number
of Cassidy’s that will even be built way back in February 2017 before anything
had even been built…. Now it is a
$45,000 difference which makes a lot more sense. For the 8 people who got locked in before
this change this is great news. If one
of those 8 reads this blog I am very curious how early you had to get on that
list to get a Cassidy since in February the waiting list was already so long. I am thinking maybe back in Fall of 2016? The first day they went on sale?

Monday, June 12, 2017

Both Verizon and Comcast are saying no internet will be available
at Riverdale Park Station for quite some time.
Comcast is saying at least 90 days and Verizon will not even give a date. Stanley Martin is saying Comcast should have
already been available as of last week and should be ready any day now but that
is not what I am hearing from Comcast. I
am hoping Stanley Martin has better information than I do from a higher source.

The mail apparently does not get delivered here as
well. I got the issue raised to the postmaster
and I should have something back from them this week according to the source at
the post office I spoke with.

There is also no trash service…. At least there are
dumpsters around from construction.

I am not sure how the two folks that closed a few months ago
in building one have been making do but maybe next time I see one of them
outside I can ask.

I figured being in building two would mean I would not have to deal with these types of issues but it appears the building #1 folks are extremely patient. :)